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Pharaoh did not appear in public during the seventy days of mourning for Sitamun, and it seemed to the court as though he were once again in a prison, this time of his own choosing. The forbidding double doors leading to his reception hall remained closed. He was not seen in the garden or on his building sites, though Tiye received word that he had ordered new quarries opened at Gebel Silsileh to provide sandstone for the masons. His butler, Parennefer, and his chief steward, Panhesy, passed through the palace corridors unobtrusively, seeing to the wants of their lord. Tiye questioned them occasionally, anxious for news of her son, and they assured her that Pharaoh was well, that his grief was almost spent, and that he was purifying himself in coarse linen and incense ash before his Aten shrine.
“Why is it necessary for him to be purified?” Tiye asked Panhesy, puzzled. “And if that is his desire, surely only Ptahhotep has the authority to perform such rites.”
Dropping his earnest gaze, the young man bowed low to her and answered with his face hidden between his outstretched, silver-laden arms. “It is Pharaoh the man who cleanses himself, not Pharaoh the god on behalf of Egypt,” he said diffidently, and with that Tiye had to be content.
Like her husband Nefertiti was staying away from active involvement in court life. She was sometimes seen walking decorously in her gardens dressed only in white linen, her black hair sleekly shining, her arms bare of jewels. Tiye noted grimly, on the few occasions when she caught a glimpse of the slim, straight figure, that Nefertiti’s beauty was only enhanced by the naturalness she had affected. Tiye herself bore no ill will to the girl. She understood Nefertiti’s vicious act with the wisdom of a ruler for whom an uncompromising line between virtue and dark necessity did not exist.
Any royal death precipitated rumor and excited gossip, particularly among the harem women. Tia-Ha told Tiye that conjecture was running rife, but the women were tolerant. They believed that both queen and empress had been in love with Pharaoh, and Nefertiti had been driven to destroy a rival by jealousy and passion. Such affairs of the heart were commonplace. The inhabitants of the harem understood such things, and the talk was kindly. The only detail that caused them unease was the discovery of the mutilated servant. It was usual for them to pursue their intrigues through subordinates, but to torture the instrument of one’s freedom instead of rewarding him violated one of the harem’s unwritten laws. They approved of Tiye’s decision to have the man nursed back to health and taken into her service, and regarded her action as the only real proof that the queen was guilty.
Tiye listened carefully to her friend’s words. She knew that once Sitamun was buried, the gossip would wither. It was a matter of waiting through the slow days of mourning.
The empress’s funeral was a restrained tribute to a woman who had run second in almost every race she had attempted. Still young at her death, she had nevertheless belonged to the old administration. After only a few brief years in the arms of her popular brother, Thothmes, she had been forced, when he died suddenly, to please an aging, unpredictable man. Since then she had walked in the shadow of her mother, less intelligent, less vital, less powerful than Tiye. Even the winning of the empress’s crown, her one bid for self-determination, had brought her merely a momentary vindication.
Only those ministers and courtiers obliged to attend royal interments formed the cortege, together with the official mourners. Pharaoh emerged from his period of meditation looking ungainly and alarmingly vague and took his place silently with Ay, Tiye, and Nefertiti. They rode on their litters without exchanging a word, the procession strung out behind them along the same route to Amunhotep III’s tomb they had taken such a short time ago.
The rituals were performed in the same mood of dignified simplicity. Tiye had dreaded the moment when she would pass her husband’s possessions to reach the chamber adjacent to him, where Sitamun was to lie. But when the time came for her to walk through the tomb behind her daughter’s coffin, she found that all trace of him had already been rendered anonymous by the events in Malkatta since his death. Time had moved the living forward. The thrones he had filled with his regal bulk, the glittering chests closed upon his thousands of gowns, the boxes hiding his many jewels could have belonged to one of the ancients. I wonder if the darkness will stir when I leave this place, she thought as she stepped forward to lay flowers over Sitamun, if currents will flow between father and daughter through the magic eyes of their sarcophagi. One of your queens has come to you, my husband. How long will it be before I, too, share these damp rooms?
The feast that brought the days-long ceremony to an end was conducted with quiet decorum, and as soon as good manners allowed, the courtiers drifted to their litters and vanished back to Malkatta.
Tiye rode back to the palace beside Pharaoh. He had wept over Sitamun’s remains quietly and with a dignity that surprised them all, and he did not talk to Tiye as they swayed along under Ra’s blind ferocity. They passed through the city of the dead, Thothmes III’s magnificent beige funerary temple shimmering like a paradisiacal mirage on their right, and were almost in sight of the palace walls when Amunhotep gave an abrupt order, and both his litter and Tiye’s swung left. His father’s great temple began to overshadow them, bars of shade alternating with white sand, but the litters did not turn onto the ram-lined avenue that would have led to its pillared fore-court. The two colossi loomed ahead, their shadows short in the noon sun. Amunhotep spoke again, and the litters came to a halt. He stepped down, inviting Tiye to do the same, and she followed him as he walked up to the nearer statue. For a second he craned his head, his gaze traveling its awesome height, and then he took her arm politely and drew her into the pale shade.
“Majesty Mother,” he said, his voice still thick with the tears he had spent, his eyes under swollen lids resting on her face with a look that was almost an apology. “For seventy days I have prayed and wept in my rooms, beating my breast and rubbing my forehead with ashes from my shrine, because I could have saved the life of my sister and did not.”
“Amunhotep,” she protested, touching him gently, “her death was not the fault of Pharaoh. Why do you reproach yourself?” His sincerity, so genuine but misdirected, disarmed her. She touched the corner of his mouth with one hennaed finger, as she had often done when he was a child, a sign of affectionate disagreement. He kissed it and drew away.
“I have heard it said that Sitamun was a victim of her own ambition, but it is not so. She died because I was a coward. I did wrong in the sight of the god.”
“How can that be? You are Amun-Ra’s incarnation.”
“I knew what I was obliged to do but quailed. The eyes of Egypt are blind, her ears stopped with deceit. She would have shouted against me. But I am braver now. I am ready.”
Tiye suppressed the sigh that rose to her lips. “You frighten people with your riddles,” she chided gently. “A king must speak clearly so that his people may obey as one.”
“It is yet two months to the end of Shemu and the celebration of New Year’s Day,” he said. “I want us to go north to Memphis, just you and I and our servants. Can you leave the court for that long?”
His request sent a tide of uneasiness flooding through her. Turning away from him, she let her gaze wander the cracked brownness of the fields that spread from her feet to the line of dusty palms that traced the Nile. Why do I suddenly cringe? she thought. It is natural that he should want to distance him self from the pain of loss for a time. But just the two of us? Does he have something serious to discuss with me? It is the prospect of him and me alone together that alarms me. Why? Behind her, Amunhotep’s breath was warm on her naked back, and she felt his hand settle pleadingly on her shoulder. “I suppose that Nefertiti can take my place for a while,” Tiye said without turning. “There is always a lull at this time of year, and it is true, I would like to see Memphis again. It has been a long time. Not since your father and I….” Her voice trailed away, but then she resumed. “Very well, my son. I would like that very
much.” It was the truth. More than anything she wanted to escape the miasma of death that had for so long drifted through the palace, the whispers and innuendoes, the strain of trying to see beyond men’s eyes to their hidden thoughts.
“Good. In three days then, Tiye.”
She turned to bow to him but saw only his back, the counterpoise of his pectoral sparkling between his stooped shoulders, his soft linen brushing his pale calves. When his litter was out of sight, she laid her cheek against the pedestal of her husband’s immobile image and closed her eyes.
They left Malkatta on the morning of the third day in the boat that Sitamun had presented to Amunhotep. He had decided to call it Kha-em-Ma’at, another form of his title Living in Truth, and had had his artisans engrave its name on its graceful hull. A disgruntled crowd of courtiers assembled at the water steps to see them depart. Nefertiti sat under her scarlet fans. Now that the funeral was over, she had begun to hint that the empress’s crown should be hers, but her husband had turned a deaf ear. Smenkhara and Meritaten dabbled in the water that lapped the steps, Smenkhara with a timid fascination, the baby gasping and chuckling as her nurse dipped her into the coolness. Prayers for the safety of Pharaoh were chanted, the courtiers made a sullen obeisance, and the flotilla of royalty, servants, priests, and soldiers slid along the canal and out onto the river.
The prevailing summer wind, when it could summon the energy to blow through the thick heat, was from the north, so each barge bristled with oars. Tiye leaned over the side of Kha-em-Ma’at, listening to the shouts of Pasi, the captain, the swift patter of bare feet as the sailors answered his orders, the gurgle of the oars as they made eddies in the muddy water. Behind her, fruit, scented water, and wine waited under the open canopy for her appetite to rise. Her son sat drowsily on cushions beside the low table, fly whisk in his fingers, humming to himself. The banks were deserted, slipping by like the edge of an arid night mare, the mud villages empty of life. The fields were brown, the leaves of the palms withered. Even the sky was vacant, the smaller birds having sought the shade of the growth along the river. Only the hawks seemed inured to the heat. They glided, wings flung out to catch the slightest breath of moving air, screaming occasionally as their sharp eyes scanned the barren ground for prey. Tiye’s fanbearers struggled to hold shade over her as she leaned out farther, mesmerized by the brown water slipping turgidly under her gaze. In a day or two it will be blue, she thought. The first sign that the sterility of Upper Egypt is behind us. Ah, fair Memphis! Crown of the world.
On the evening of the fourth day out from Thebes, as the royal barge was being tethered against the bank, Pasi came to the canopy and bowed before Amunhotep. “I had hoped that we might tie up a little farther downriver, where there is a village and some vegetation, Mighty Horus,” he apologized, “but I had underestimated the sluggishness of the current and the strength of the wind. Forgive me for requesting that you spend the night in this place.”
Amunhotep smiled and dismissed him, walking with Tiye to watch the other barges tie up and the servants flock ashore to set up the tents, carpet the sand, light torches, and prepare the evening meal. “It is a lonely place but somehow beautiful,” he said to her, scanning the view. “I do not remember passing it on my way either to or from Memphis.”
“That is probably because the captain of the barge you were traveling in contrived very hard not to incur your wrath by stopping here,” Tiye retorted. “Gods! I can almost hear my thoughts echo against those frowning cliffs. It looks as though not even peasants have been foolish enough to settle here.”
“Peaceful,” her son murmured.
They were ramped to one side of a huge area of virgin sand, through which the river wound in a slow curve. At either bend cliffs met the water, but here they drew back, rising in a ragged sweep on the west side but broken on the east into long mysterious gullies, fingers of rock into whose shadows night had al ready crept. The sun was almost gone, its red rim limning the black cliff top, its last rays pouring onto the unsullied sand. Beyond the cheerful human bustle on the bank, the dead silence was palpable, pressing against the intruders with a weighty impatience.
“A terrible heat must beat in here during the day,” Tiye said. “How great a distance do you think it is from one end of the valley and the other, Majesty?”
“So pure,” he sighed, pulling himself from his contemplation. “Nothing but sharp rock and blinding sand, a giant cup to hold the daily gold of Ra.”
Out on the bank a group of servants suddenly began laughing. The sound left their mouths only to be returned to them a hundredfold, as if an invisible army hidden in the cliffs were mocking them. Tiye’s flesh crawled. At the bottom of the ramp stood her maimed, tongueless servant, a huge pot of lamp fuel in both arms as her under-steward shouted some order at him. Tiye turned back into the cabin, letting the curtains fall as she went.
Within another day the haunted silence of the valley was a memory, and in another three they were tying up at Memphis to a tumult of welcome. Thousands lined the bank, some scrambling to the roofs of the warehouses or plunging into the water to catch a glimpse of the royal visitors. Amunhotep smiled indulgently at them, raising the crook and flail high as he descended the ramp and lowered himself onto the waiting litter. Tiye ordered her own litter to be brought aboard and secured her curtains tightly before allowing herself to be carried ashore, for she did not believe that the faces of living gods should be exposed to the rude gaze of peasants. She remained secluded until she was set down safely behind the walls of the palace, when she went onto the roof immediately, Amunhotep close behind. “I had forgotten how beautiful it is!” she breathed. “What a fine view the palace commands. So many trees, Amunhotep, and such a profusion of untended flowers. Look at the sun on the lake the ancients built. I see the Syrian temple to Reshep has been given a new roof—you can just glimpse it through the foliage. Our trade with Syria must be lucrative for them. I think there are a few women still in the harem here. Will you visit them?”
He smiled noncommittally. “I do not think so. But I will go into the temples as I used to when I was high priest of Ptah. Would you like a barge ride into the papyrus swamps of the Delta tomorrow? It is only a half-day away.”
“Your father and I used to hunt wildfowl in those swamps, many years ago,” she said dreamily. “I would like that very much. Have you noticed how different the noise of Memphis is from the irritating clamor of Thebes? I…”
He had turned away from her and was squinting up at the sun, his attention no longer on her words. I suppose I must not mention his father, she thought crossly. Well, I will try not to, seeing he has invited me here, but he must conquer a hatred that no longer has validity.
For a month she and her son went their own ways. Pharaoh spent much time being carried in and out of the myriad temples of the foreigners who now called Memphis their home, and although he received a delegation from the temple of Ptah, he made no official visit there. Tiye herself met the mayor of Memphis and the commanders of her border patrols, whose soldiers were stationed in the city when they were standing down. She also received many of the wealthy merchants and foreign diplomats whose business kept them headquartered in Memphis, feasting in the gracious reception hall her husband had loved to decorate. She visited the harem, finding it a well run but melancholy place, half-empty and quiet.
But when their duties were done, Tiye and Amunhotep began to enjoy wandering the cool rooms of the empty palace or aimlessly pacing the winding garden paths together. In the hot afternoons they separated, lulled to sleep by the swish of fans and the muted plucking of harps. They spent a day being poled through the shoulder-high, rustling papyrus swamps. Amunhotep, though he could drive a chariot well and shoot a bow after a fashion, resolutely refused to hunt. Tiye’s own fingers itched to hold a throwing stick as clouds of geese, ducks, and other water birds rose unchallenged around them, but it was good nonetheless to lie in the little hunting punt, watching the feathery papyrus fronds meeting o
ver her head against the deep blue of a sky that bore no trace of the angry bronze tinge of a southern summer.
Time flowed as sweetly as the wine poured into the cups they raised. Tiye could not decide whether it was the influence of the bittersweet memories that came stealing from every corner of the palace or the lazy pattern of carefree days that were wiping all signs of tension from her face.
One twilight, as they sat together on the terrace looking down into the scented garden, Amunhotep turned in his chair and quietly gave an order to the servant behind him. The man went away and returned with the Keeper of the Royal Regalia. He carried a heavy chest Tiye recognized only too well.
“Greetings, Channa!” she said, surprised. “I did not know that you had accompanied us.”
He bowed, murmuring a respectful reply. Amunhotep ordered him to place the chest on the table and then commanded both Channa and the butler who had been in attendance to depart. The terrace was soon empty but for the two of them.
Amunhotep leaned over and poured her wine himself. She kept her eyes on the chest, her heart suddenly painfully active, her throat dry. Picking up her cup, she drank quickly to hide her agitation. Pharaoh began to speak, haltingly at first, but with increasing courage as the night deepened and concealed his face.
“At the feet of Osiris Amunhotep I told you that Sitamun’s death was my fault,” he said, and Tiye, incredulous, realized that she heard him pronounce his father’s name for the first time. “Now I will tell you why. I knew deep in my heart that the god did not wish me to make her empress. I should have married her and allowed her to remain only a queen. She was my sister, and I had a right and a duty to marry her, but another’s blood call was stronger. The god punished me for my cowardice by destroying her. If I had done what I knew was proper, she would still be alive. No,” he said softly as she tried to speak, “I am not thinking of dear Nefertiti.”
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